Epistemology of Ancient Lost Technology

What is “lost knowledge”? As human civilizations arise and develop, they accumulate knowledge. That knowledge has many forms, from the pragmatic to the theoretical. In most cultures, there is a significant body of what one might call ‘organic’ or indigenous knowledge: an understanding of plants and natural medicines, for example, or the ability to track an animal, or the methods for building a structure out of earth, wood, stone, or other material. That knowledge is accumulated in various informal ways over centuries and even millennia, while in the rapid progression to modernity it can be become lost in just a generation or two.

The wheel, invented sometime before the fourth millennium BC, is one of the most ubiquitous and important technologies. This detail of the "Standard of Ur", c. 2500 BC., displays a Sumerian chariot (Public Domain)

Consider a specific kind of knowledge: technological knowledge, and ideas about machines and devices in particular. Human beings seem to have a natural affinity for technology in this regard: even the most remote of mankind’s ancestors made things — arrowheads, flint tools, and so on. Humans are not just Homo sapiens but also Homo faber: humans create and uses technology, and in turn it defines them as human beings. Without doubt, other animals use tools, but the extent to which technology shapes human cultures is unique.